Ok so if the ice caps melt, then the water level will rise and there will be floods. but surely because ice has less

Question: Ok so if the ice caps melt, then the water level will rise and there will be floods. but surely because ice has less mass than water, and because the ice caps increase the water level anyway because of the arkimedes water level thing, wouldn't it stay at a similar level?
- Keywords:
  arkimedes,
  cap,
  flood,
  ice,
  increase,
  level,
  mass,
  melt,
  rise,
  water
Asked by elhermano to David, Luna, Mark, Melanie, Probash on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: General.
- David Pyle answered on 20 Mar 2011:
  
  Yes – melting of ice which is floating on water (e.g. at the north pole) will make little difference to global sea level (ignoring complications like its low salt content, temperature and so on). But there is a large amount of water stored as ice both on Greenland (about 7 m of global sea level rise, if it all melted) and on the continent of Antarctica (about 70 m of sea level rise).
- Mark Vesey answered on 20 Mar 2011:
  
  You are right saying that the same volume of ice versus water has less mass and there are massive amounts of ice below water level but there is also a phenomenal amount of ice above sea level and therefore the ice melting that is situated above sea level will increase sea level.
- Melanie Stefan answered on 21 Mar 2011:
  
  Warm water takes more space than cold water (at least, once you are past 4 celsius), so that alone would make water level rise. Also, with global warming, some of the ice that was previously on land (for instance, on glaciers) will melt and go into the sea, contributing to rising sea levels.
- Luna Munoz answered on 21 Mar 2011:
  
  My understanding is that a lot of the ice is above the level of the water. Because a lot of the ice that exists is not submerged under water, we will notice a big difference if it does melt and run into the oceans.